Think Regeneration Leadership Academy

Receive detailed information about how soil health, human health, environmental health and animal health are connected, and the problems facing those systems today. 

You will walk away with clear command of the language of regeneration and be able to describe the impact you will have with absolute clarity. 

The network you will develop with your peers at the Academy will last a lifetime and create exponential learning opportunities. We encourage peer-to-peer collaboration from the start.

Is your farm, ranch or business trying to adopt regenerative values at its core? Our Academy can help your leadership team build real problem solving tools to help solve critical problems, and leadership skills to talk to employees, investors, community members, and more.

We will work 1-on-1 with you to understand your goals in attending the Academy and ensure that when you return to the day-to-day work, you are given the leadership tools you desire to succeed.

If you're a new farmer or a seasoned executive, our Leadership Academy starts with building a common mindset and emphasizes learning from others, no matter who you are. We firmly believe in the power of everyone learning from each other without bias.

Think Regeneration's free mentoring and coaching programs bring tools and training readily available to the C Suite to regenerative farmers and ranchers. Our programs can support your goals with workforce development, communication, executive development and personnel management. The 12-week is customized for you, but structured on industry-leading coaching and problem solving programs. Whether you are leading a large-scale ranch, a small family farm, a startup business, an established international company, an educational event, or an individual brand, this is an investment that will last for years to come.

You will walk away being able to:

This is the starting point. Let's find out where you are on the regenerative spectrum by discussing your views on the regenerative movement, your personality type, your goals for being in the program, and your strengths and weaknesses. Learn important history that led us here, and connect the dots between our current food supply’s linear thinking, incorrect math and the need for real change.

Let's set 3-4 SMART goals for the work you want to accomplish. These goals will be unique to you, while also being manageable and measurable. We will revisit these goals throughout the program to ensure we are on track and making progress.

Why is changing to a more regenerative approach important? What makes the participant’s story unique and interesting? They will add to your toolkit a definitive "why" you can use in almost any circumstance that defines their role and goals.   

What is the change curve and how does this apply to regenerative agriculture? What creates effective leaders in change? See the obstacles before they arrive. We will plot a path to help a participant know when to expect conflict, friction, and also improvement.

Participants will walk away understanding how to break down any type of problem, big or small, while being able to identify solutions that can help them the most. This program is based on real-world problem-solving fundamentals taught to C-Suite executives.

Let’s focus on converting a participant’s ideas into a real plan. You will build a set of criteria to help them find the best solutions that fit their budget and resource levels, and learn how to predict outcomes based on careful planning, researching and criteria building. This program is based on budget setting fundamentals taught to C-Suite executives.

Get renewed confidence in explaining your story, regenerative agriculture, and the need for change. Work with a trained journalist to build a participant’s experience in scenarios where their time is limited, and they need to answer questions accurately, correctly, and consistently. You will learn where your messaging is strongest, and where you need to fill in the gaps.    

How will the participant present a regenerative plan to investors, staff, colleagues, insurance companies, community members, politicians, extension agents and even to your family? This week, your confidence grows even stronger as we look at the custom communication scenarios you will be facing and build an effective communication strategy.

Connect with leaders in the regenerative movement to learn more about their experiences.

Bring on Think Regeneration to your agriculture event, conservation district, sales team, strategic planning initiative, co-op leaders, farm/ranch managers, or board of directors to guide them on a one-of-a-kind journey into the regenerative movement. Participants will explore how their personality and their personal story led them to regenerative concepts, while learning problem solving tools for any situation, and collaborating with other peers in the industry on real-world issues.

Contact Ryan Slabaugh at ryan@think-regen.com for pricing and scheduling details, or if your organization wants to sponsor an event in your region. Sponsorships are available in 2023.

Advance

Personality tests completed in advance. Results are shared when attendees arrive as part of their attendance packets.

8 am-9 am Introduction

Why are we here? Where would we use these leadership skills? We will learn skills that we can apply to negotiations with buyers and sellers, with investment companies, to explain regeneration to policymakers and consumers, and to help lift up all of our communities in need.

Exercise 1: Who You Are. We will review the findings in the personality tests and create a group discussion around how our individualism can affect team dynamics, leadership tactics and change management.

Exercise 2: Everyone will introduce themselves, and share 1-2 key takeaways from their personality test that they think would be key for the group to know. 

9-10 am Build Your Why

Now that we know a little bit about each other and our general makeup, let’s make sure we all have a clear vision of why we are here. We will use the hour to interview each other and determine our “why”? 

Exercise 1: Pair up. Talk to your peer for 5-10 minutes about what they do, their personality, and why they care about the regenerative movement. Ask them questions to help them put words around their “why”. Then, ask them to do the same for you.

Exercise 2: Write. Take the interview experience and write for 10 minutes on your own. In the end, make sure you have 1 clear sentence that explains why you are in regenerative farming, or why you believe in a regenerative world. 

Exercise 3: Everyone stands up and tells their why to the group. For the rest of the day, you will continue to refine this.

10-10:15 am Fresh Air Break

10:15 am-11:30 am Regenerative Vision Discussion #1

Now that you have your personal why, let’s explore the collective reasoning behind the movement. What does a world look like with circular economies? Why is leadership essential for building relationships? What mindset drives the leaders in our movement today?

Exercise 1: Break into small groups. Each group will have a specific problem to look at — from soaring health care costs to waterway pollution — and will reach a consensus on 1 sentence that describes why regenerative farming movement is important to the world. 

Exercise 2: Read your collective “why” to the group. Is there one that stands out and can be agreed upon as most clearly and holistically explains the goals?

11:30 am-12:30 pm BREAK FOR LUNCH

12:30 pm-1:30 pm Build Your What

Now that we have your “why” built, let’s talk about the “what” of regenerative leadership. What are you doing to drive the movement? Can you describe it absolutely clearly?

Exercise 1: Create a list of everything that you do that is regenerative and degenerative. 

Exercise 2: Pair up. Share the list with your partner. Talk about what you would need to stop doing the degeneration acts. Discuss how to do more regenerative acts. What are the common roadblocks that keep coming up that prevent progress?

Exercise 3: Group discussion. Present your roadblocks. How many were common? How many were unique? Could you connect the dots clearly between seeing the roadblock and actively working against it? What mindset will drive you to keep moving?

1:30 pm-2:30 pm Media Exercise 1:1

Scenario: The local news has caught on to the changes you are making, and are trying to latch onto the buzz of regeneration. They schedule an interview with you. You will get the experience of being interviewed by a professional journalist and asked to defend your “why” through clear, consistent messaging. (Note: This can also be an investor, business partner, parent, neighbor, community member, government official, etc.)

Exercise 1: A 5- to 10-minute 1:1 interview with a professional journalist, in front of a camera. How well can you speak when you are on the spot?

Exercise 2: Receive feedback from peers and program leaders and exercises to help you become more comfortable in front of a camera, speaking on command about what you do and why. 

2:30-2:45 pm FRESH AIR BREAK

2:45 pm-4 pm Regenerative Vision Discussion #2

Farmers and rancher empowerment. What does it mean to collectively stand for something and apply pressure for change? What policies are currently dividing farmers that must be addressed? What challenges will we have getting the public, and our leaders, to listen? What biases do we need to give up to collectively move forward?

Exercise 1: Let’s build a picture of the modern farmer today. Who are we describing? How many different “characters” are in agriculture that we need to understand and address?

Exercise 2: Let’s create the story chart of each character through Regenerative agriculture. Where do they start? Where do they improve? Where do they struggle? Where do they end up? What similarities in the stories start to show? Where are the places where the journeys really diverge?

4 pm-5:30 pm Media Exercise 3:1

It’s your big moment. A government panel has called you to testify on the behalf of the regenerative movement with 1 of your peers and 1 person who is against the regenerative movement. We will discuss the art of listening on stage, using your time wisely when your microphone is on, and setting goals for repeat messaging on key points.

Exercise 1: Break up into groups of 2. Each will get a set of 3 questions and 15-20 minutes to prepare their answers. You will not know who will be called to talk about what, or what the third member of the committee will be talking about.

Exercise 2: The panel is asked questions and expected to answer on a timeline. They will be given a small time to respond to contrarian statements.

5:30-6:30 pm Happy Hour

6:30-8 pm Dinner & Keynote

8 am-9 am The Case for Regenerative Agriculture

Let's recap Day 1 and remind ourselves why we are here. Let's review the takeaways from Day 1, and set up for a successful Day 2!

9 am-Noon Future Problem Solving Exercise

Split into groups of 3-5. Choose one of the critical problems facing our food supply today: Food deserts, pollution, inequity in distribution, struggling rural communities, a lack of consumer interest, bloated subsidy programs, or high disease rates.

Exercise 1: List all the problems created by the primary problem. For example, food deserts create higher illness rates, hunger, a lack of economic opportunity, and higher crime.

Exercise 2: Write the main problem into one, clear sentence. Make sure the problem truly encapsulates why it is important to address.

Exercise 3: Write all the solutions that come to mind. These can be partial or whole solutions to the problem. There are no bad ideas.

Exercise 4: Eliminate duplicate solutions. Combine similar solutions if possible.

Exercise 5: Using a set of pre-established criteria, score the solutions. Eliminate the lowest scoring solutions. 

Exercise 6: Write the answer to your main problem with 1-2 paragraphs. You should be able to explain the concept and correlate that with how it solves the problem in less than 30 seconds. Ensure everyone in your group can speak to the solution clearly. 

Exercise 7: Roundtable. Bring the solutions to the larger group and give them your 30-second explanation. They will ask you questions and your group will be in charge of answering clearly and quickly. 

Exercise 8: Test & Share. After you leave, take your problem and solution and test it in the world. Is it effective in creating awareness and understanding? Does it stand up to scrutiny? Share how your concept evolves with the group through a Think Tank discussion group you can be a part of forever.

Noon: Wrap-Up & Depart